Page 65 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
“Why do you think they aren’t? You seem like a bright enough woman. Figure it out.”
“But you notice one thing?” I asked.
“What?”
“I’m not in Hemi’s office complaining. I’m in yours.”
It was a duel, then, but for once, my eyes didn’t drop. And, yes—I wasn’t exactly alone in this fight. I got that. But if Hemi wanted me here? I needed a job. A real one. “If I have to stay past five,” I said, “or if somebody tells me I did a lousy job and to start over? Too bad. I’m not fragile, I don’t melt, and I don’t break. And if Hemi has a problem with it, he can tellme.”
To my shock, he smiled. “I have to say—I never got it. Maybe I’m starting to.”
“My appeal,” I said, ignoring the fact that my legs were shaking, and my hands were trying to do the same thing. “You figured it’d be over soon enough. Hemi would get bored with an insipid little mouse like me, or I’d get bored myself. I’d get tired of pretending to be a working woman, because it didn’t turn out to be anything likeSex and the Cityand it was too hard, and I’d go do…whatever you imagine women like me do. You know. Gold-diggers.”
“I’m not even touching that.” He paused for another long minute, and I waited and tried to act calm. “Right,” he finally said. “I don’t know what the hell to do with you. For now…my assistant’s out sick today, we’ve got a major meeting this afternoon, and I need some help getting ready for it. I also need somebody to take notes, and I guess if you can’t be trusted, Hemi’s in more trouble than I am. You can do that for today, while I figure out what poor Godforsaken soul I’m sticking you on. Or I’ll quit myself, because I don’t need this aggravation. One or the other.”
“See?” I asked. “How hard was that?”
“Don’t push it,” he growled, and I may have laughed.
For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, I was actually busy. Too busy to eat more lunch than a salad grabbed at my desk, and I wouldn’t have done that except that my funky stomach insisted that it would rebel otherwise. And it was all great.
And then I went to the meeting, and maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe it was. Turned out I wasn’t a mouse at all.
Hemi
When I walked into the larger of the two conference rooms on the executive floor and saw Hope near the foot of the table…it jolted me.
For one thing, that she was there at all. For another, that she was wearing a yellow dress I hadn’t seen before, one with a wrap-front bodice that fit a little too close and showed a little too much of her upper chest for my comfort.
Or maybe that I didn’t see her dressed for work anymore, or with her laptop open. By the time I got home, she was in her PJs or a dressing gown, letting me know she was ready for me to take them off her, or in workout gear that never failed to give me ideas. And when I left in the morning, she usually wasn’t wearing anything at all. She started out the evening dressed, but she didn’t tend to stay that way, because I liked her naked.
I didn’t know how I’d ever managed to sleep without her nude body pressed back against mine and my arm draped over her bare breasts, keeping her safe, or safely with me, or both. She was my reward, my secret solace in the dark, my lucky charm. What shewasn’t,though, was a distraction during a critical meeting.
I didn’t say anything, or acknowledge her, either. I kept my focus, sat down at the head of the table, nodded to Henry at my right, and said, “Go.”
He nodded to Cherise Clairmont in his turn, and she jumped up and started in on it. The Colors of the Earth line, to be unveiled during the Paris show in a few months’ time, and splashed into every bit of print and digital media we could manage after that. And today, I was seeing how Marketing had interpreted the message I’d told them to convey.
I’d turned from the mahogany table, leaning back in the leather armchair to see the screen behind me.
“The Colors of the Earth,” Cherise said, her voice ringing with confidence as she clicked on the first slide, a mockup of a variety of dark-skinned Pacific beauties, all long, dark hair, flower wreaths, and dresses in the vibrant jewel tones of my homeland in draped, figure-flattering cuts and lush, sensual fabrics. Despite myself, my pulse quickened to see my vision brought to life.
As the show went on, though, I became restless. “Looks good,” I interrupted after yet another slide, this one for a magazine feature. A woman, her arm wrapped around a fern tree in the endless, impossible green of the New Zealand bush, the dress she wore a startling contrast in its rich rose hue, the captionThe Colors of the Earth: Escape to Paradise.“You’ve gone all Pacific, which is good, but you’ve done it with the models, which isn’t. And nothing but the standard look, even if she’s dark.”
“Well, yes,” Henry said. “Hitting the theme hard.”
“We’re meant to be going for wearability,” I said. “Diversity.”
“And we’ve got diversity,” Henry said. “No blondes. Not much European at all here.”
The rest of the table looked concerned, except for Hope, who was just looking at me with interest. She’d been typing all along, but now, she seemed to have forgotten to and was sitting with her hands poised above the keyboard.
“That’s not diversity.” I tried to contain my impatience. “That’s anything but.”
“We have focus-group data.” The voice was confident, cold, and came from a brunette halfway down the table.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Maggie Anderson,” she said. “I ran the groups, and I wrote up the results. The response to the Pacific campaign was by far the most positive of the looks we tested. The data were sent to you, I believe, several weeks ago.”
